


The quiet heard your name

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Brock Rumlow Is Really Nasty, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gaslighting, HYDRA Trash Party, Like a lot of gaslighting, M/M, Manipulation, Medical Procedures, Multi, Sexual Violence, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-21 22:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14924147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Written for the HTP prompt: "One of Bucky's attackers makes a point of letting him know just how gentle, merciful, restrained etc they're being - while actually being quite violent."(Or, if you want to see HYDRA dumpsters manipulating Bucky until he thinks they are the good guys)





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full prompt can be found [here](https://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/2807.html?thread=6161911#cmt6161911). 
> 
> Please heed the warnings!

HYDRA has been very good to the soldier. They have given him many things: food, shelter, training, a new arm. They explain everything carefully to him when he is confused, and they forgive him whenever he gets too angry, which is often. They trust him to carry out important missions, and they don’t even treat him too awfully for the bad things he did before they let him join them. The soldier doesn’t remember exactly what those bad things were, but he knows from the way some of the people look at him that they must have been truly unspeakable.   
  
He gets flashes of these bad things, sometimes, especially when he has been out of cryo for a long time, especially when he is asleep: he sees people in front of him, pleading, hurt in ways they shouldn’t be. The people in front of him in the dreams seem like they are innocent.  
  
The people that the soldier targets on HYDRA’s orders are not innocent. No, those are  _necessary_  targets: his superiors are always careful to explain that although the work HYDRA does is very complex and sometimes confusing, it is always in the world’s best interests.   
  
The people in the dreams, though—they were innocent, and it had been wrong to kill them; the soldier can tell by the heavy feeling in his gut when he wakes up. That means that the people in the dreams must be part of the bad things the soldier did before he was with HYDRA; their deaths must be part of what HYDRA has forgiven him for. The soldier is grateful for that forgiveness, and for everything else HYDRA does for him, even if he still gets angry sometimes.   
  
Mostly, he gets angry when he is away from his friends. Like he is now.  
  
The technicians in labcoats are milling about, towering over the metal chair he is sitting in under very bright lights, and the soldier knows vaguely, from a long repetition of events over many many years, that he is the middle of the interminable tests that always occur whenever he is woken up to do what HYDRA needs of him. He cannot judge well, both because he is still groggy and because he doesn’t quite remember, but today the tests seem even more interminable than usual, the flow of pain and needles and charts even more repetitive. There’s a tube going down the back of his nose, another narrow line of tubing entering a vein in his human arm, and although he does not remember either of those things being put into him he knows they are connected to the tests somehow. Every fifteen minutes or so, a female technician off to one side of him reads out a series of numbers, and a male technician standing behind a computer station types something into a keyboard. Both of them seem irritated.  
  
The soldier tries not to shiver. The room they are in is cold and they have not put clothes on him yet. He is not restrained in this chair, and he is grateful for that, even if he does not feel well. The smell of antiseptic in this room is overpowering. He doesn’t know why it smells like that. He is not even sure he  _needs_  antiseptic.   
  
“I told them last time to get his levels right BEFORE he went back into cryo.” The male technician is off to the soldier’s left somewhere now, still fiddling with the computer. “If anyone but me would actually read the files the Soviets sent us…”  
  
The man doesn’t sound terribly worried, just annoyed, and so the soldier drifts, tuning out the words. He is bored. He is cold. His shoulder aches. He does not like the people who work on him in rooms like this one, even though he knows the work they do is necessary. They are never nice to him, even though his very important friend Pierce has told the soldier that he is far more valuable than they are. When the female technician appears next to him again and sticks yet another needle into the top part of his human arm, he turns his head to her and glares.  
  
The woman pulls the needle out quickly, and takes a large step backwards.  
  
“Easy, soldier,” the male technician says, and the soldier switches his gaze to him. The man has finally looked up from his monitor. His voice had been loud; he is trying to act like he is in charge, as if the soldier can’t tell just from his posture that he is already terrified.  
  
The room is quiet, the only sound now for the soft beeping of one of the machines hooked into him. There is another man standing just inside the door to the room, holding a rifle, and now he is raising it, slowly, as if he thinks doing it at that speed will stop the soldier noticing. There is always at least one man with a rifle. But the soldier can tell without even looking at him that the man with the gun is almost as scared as the technicians.   
  
The soldier holds the male technician’s gaze, and when the other man shifts his eyes away the soldier feels his lip curl with contempt. On the edge of his vision, the woman who had given him the shot takes another big step backwards.   
  
“Call the eighth floor,” the male technician says, and must be addressing her. His voice is less confident than his words. The machine is still beeping. “See if you can get Thomas to send Rumlow in here, he should be almost done with the briefing. He always calms the asset down.”  
  
The soldier turns to watch the woman as she makes her request. He remembers that second name: his friend Rumlow is not as powerful and important as some of his other friends in HYDRA, but he is nicer to the soldier than  _any_  of them, and just the vague impressions the name brings up are enough to make the soldier relax his hands against the armrests of his metal chair, where he hadn’t even been aware he had been gripping them.   
  
Then both of his hands grip right back down when the woman says: “He says Rumlow’s not available. He says he’s not going to send him down whenever we request him just because we’re too terrible at our jobs to calm down the asset ourselves.”  
  
A silence, broken only by the high metallic sound of the soldier’s left hand gouging into the armrest, and then the male technician audibly swallows. The soldier looks at him and then at the man with the gun, who has now shifted his index finger onto its trigger.   
  
The male technician says: “Tell him if he wants us to do our jobs, and doesn’t want the asset tranqued and too dazed to do  _his_  job,  _we need his goddamn buddy_.”  
  
Another pause as she relays this into the phone. The soldier thinks the man with the gun might actually have pissed himself.   
  
The female technician says: “Thomas says he can send down Lang and Walker to help if you want.”  
  
The soldier frowns, and a piece of the armrest snaps off in his metal hand.   
  
He doesn’t like those names. He might still not be fully awake, and he might not quite remember everything, but—those two men are not his friends. They are not nice to him. They are worse than the technicians. Much worse.  
  
The male technician suddenly takes a stumbling step back from his computer, and the man with the gun yells something very loud, and the soldier realizes that he must have moved.  
  
He stops, leans back in the chair and tries to breathe, tries to make himself relax. The room is very bright, and the beeping is getting louder. He is very angry; he has let himself get angry again. He does not like the technicians, he does not like being cold and having tubes stuck in him—but the technicians work for HYDRA, and HYDRA has only ever wanted to help him. They are trying to make him healthy enough to complete his mission. He needs to be still and let them finish their work.   
  
But—those two men. Lang and Walker. The other men from the STRIKE team who are  _not_  his friends. They are not nice to the soldier, and now they might be here soon, when none of his friends are around to help him. They are not nice. They—  
  
The soldier jerks up from the chair, because he needs to stand now, he needs to move. Something clatters and breaks off to one side, and the tube going into his nose catches on something and pulls horribly, but he needs to move.   
  
He is already on his feet when something small and hard and sharp is in his neck. The female technician is over him and close, a new syringe in her hand. Someone swears, and the room blurs.  
  
“I fucking TOLD him we needed Rumlow,” the soldier hears the male technician say as the world tilts, and then everything is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

It is twenty-seven hours later, and the soldier has remembered exactly why he does not like those two men.   
  
He is back in the same building he’d been woken up in, in a different room now, under a strip of fluorescent ceiling lights that reflect off the laminate floor that the soldier is kneeling on. The first man whose name he had heard spoken before, Lang, has just finished with him, and the soldier’s neck and throat are very sore, the skin on the bottom half of his face prickly with wetness. He is still fully clothed after the mission, but he feels cold. Lang had dragged on what he had been doing to the soldier for so long that several of the others in the room had started to complain, and now they are probably even angrier.  
  
The soldier understands. He had delayed the mission by two hours and forty-five minutes by requiring the technicians to tranquilize him before they finished their work. They had recovered from the delay, but he thinks he might have performed sloppily on the mission as well, due to the lingering effects of the drug in his system. He doesn’t  _remember_  performing particularly below his usual standards: in fact, he had carried out the final phase of the mission almost entirely by himself, after Walker had missed that easy shot at the target’s bodyguard. But perhaps the others had noticed things that the soldier had missed. In any case, aiding in stress relief to others on the team when needed has always been a part of the soldier’s work with HYDRA.  
  
He doesn’t bother to wipe his mouth, just steadies himself on his knees and waits. Low voices in conversation from several points in the room: nothing important, and the soldier allows himself to focus on one familiar voice for longer than he needs to. Another person talking on his phone by the door, voice casual, and the noise near that of Lang doing his pants up. And then another man is up close in front of the soldier now, above where he is kneeling, blocking out some of the fluorescent light from above. This man—the soldier knows his name, but does not bother to think of it now—this man likes him to keep his eyes open, the soldier remembers this. The soldier lifts his eyes to look at his face as he opens his mouth, as he allows the man to tilt open his jaw. The man smiles down at the soldier, and pinches his cheek almost affectionately with his other hand: the soldier must have remembered correctly.   
  
The conversations in the room continue beyond the new rhythmic noises the man is making. The new man is not nearly as rough as Lang had been, but the smell and taste of a mission’s worth of accumulated unwashed sweat and grime is particularly harsh when it comes to this team member, and the soldier breathes as steadily as he can and tries to—  
  
The man does not seem to mind when the soldier loses focus, so he lets his gaze wander past him, beyond the other men, to what he can see of the far wall of the room.   
  
The soldier thinks, from half-there memories and from some of the fixtures still remaining, that this room used to be some sort of laboratory in use by HYDRA. Whatever it was, it’s unused now: most of the benches have been removed, and the room is instead full of rows of equipment draped with clear plastic sheeting. It has been the same way the last two times they took him here. Before that, he thinks, there was a different room they did this in—a bathroom, with pale tiles and showers. The soldier had been allowed to bathe himself before and afterward. Many of the men had been different then. Maybe the ones that are gone are dead. The soldier doesn’t care; they might have worked for HYDRA with him, but they were not his friends.   
  
This man is not his friend, either. He has moved a hand to one side of the soldier’s head, heel of his hand pressed on his cheekbone, and the soldier remembers now, aided by the smell and the familiar jolting movement of the man's hips against his mouth, why he had known to keep his eyes open: They were alone, away from here, although he does not remember exactly where. It was long ago, a week or a month or a year. Cold, a dim room with ice on the windows. The man had put his thumbs against the soldier’s eyes when the soldier had closed them, and told him to keep them open after this or—don’t close your eyes again no matter what or—the man could do what he wanted, because HYDRA could just make the soldier new eyes—because HYDRA would be happy to do that.   
  
The soldier had not believed him, but he had shivered under the press of the man’s thumbs anyway: the man had gouged so deep, just in warning, that the nerves in the soldier’s retinae lit up like a gunshot outside at night. The soldier had not moved: aiding in stress relief to others on his team when needed is a part of his work with HYDRA. He had shivered and he had not moved. The man had laughed once; the soldier had heard it above him.   
  
The soldier hisses in breath: he can’t close his eyes against the memory, or all the other memories, or the smell, or the sick fullness in his throat. The light in the room is harsh despite the man blocking so much of it out, and everything is so close, and he can’t—  
  
But the soldier is good, and he is doing much better than he had been before when he was with the technicians; he is in control enough now to remember what he needs to do when he feels like this.

He shifts his gaze, as much as he can, over to the lab bench still set up in one corner of the gutted room, to the voice he had been listening to before, to where his friend is.   
  
Rumlow is sitting up on this bench, next to an old stainless-steel sink; Rumlow’s larger companion is standing beside it. Rumlow has what looks like paperwork in his lap, and both of the men have been going over these papers since they came into this room with the others. But Rumlow has been glancing up at the soldier every now and then, checking on him: the soldier has been able to see Rumlow doing this when the other men have allowed him to turn his head enough to look.   
  
The soldier does not have as good a view now, but he looks out of the corner of his eye; Rumlow, as if he can sense this, glances up again as well. He meets the soldier’s eye.   
  
Just that is enough to do it: the sick feeling recedes in the soldier’s gut, even if it doesn’t disappear. The tension that had been collecting in his shoulder and coiling in his left arm fades away.

He is safe. His friend is here.   
  
After this, maybe the soldier will tell Rumlow about what the man had done. Maybe the soldier has told him already. Maybe that is why the man is not that rough tonight, and has not threatened the soldier again. In either case—the soldier is  _safe_. There are always very strict rules in force when his friend is here. It will not be like that time after the very long plane ride. It will not be like that time in the back of the truck, in the snow afterward.  
  
He breathes again, steadier despite the weight still in his mouth, until he is feeling better enough to think and be reasonable and to understand. The work of killing, the type of killing that he and his team performed on the day’s mission, will often attract people who are cruel. Perhaps it is even unavoidable. Perhaps HYDRA actually requires men like this. In any case, the soldier has done very bad things, and perhaps he is still getting off lightly. In any case, it had been childish and selfish to act up like he had done before. In any case, this will not last a very long time.   
  
He tells himself this, and keeps his eyes open and his left arm unused and harmless at his side, until the man paws at his skull for one long final stretch and then finishes in his mouth, spilling down over the back of his tongue.

He pulls back, pinches the soldier’s cheek again as he steps away. Unlike some of the others, this man doesn’t seem interested in what the soldier does with what he’d left in his mouth, so the soldier just leans forward a little and spits the liquid onto the floor. Someone laughs at that.  
  
Walker is next, half-jokingly pushing another man away as he steps up to freshly obscure the soldier’s vision. More voices from somewhere, and then Walker laughs and grabs the soldier’s hair with jolting suddenness, yanks him toward him. Briefly the soldier hopes that he will accidentally step in the other man’s come on the floor and be disgusted, but if it does happen Walker doesn’t seem to care. He pushes himself in fast, fingers still hooked in the soldier’s hair, and works up to a brutal pace almost immediately, but Rumlow is still here, he had looked at the soldier; the soldier is still safe, so he just—  
  
He is not here. Usually it would be unforgivably dangerous for the soldier to drift so much when he is fully awake, to not pay attention to his team members. But not now; the soldier is safe. His jaw aches, his throat, his scalp; his eyes and face are wet, he—  
  
—he thinks of the equipment in the room he had seen earlier, hidden under plastic. Someone had been with the soldier once in a room like this one, a scientist from HYDRA but one who didn’t ignore him, who spoke to him and was kind. He had led the soldier around and told him the names of the machines and what they did. The soldier remembers how amazed he had been, how impressed he was with HYDRA for allowing him to be part of its technology. He has forgotten the exact machines they had looked at, and he has forgotten the scientist’s name. He wishes they had let him keep that. The man had been kind.  
  
There’s a sudden emptiness, cold air on his face pulling him back to the present—a loud stinging impact as the man slaps him. Walker had been talking, maybe, and the soldier had not reacted; now he is yelling.   
  
“—think you’re better than me? Huh? Answer me, bitch, you think you’re—”  
  
The soldier looks up at him and blinks. The question is stupid. Of  _course_  the soldier is better than him; Walker had just missed an easy shot on this mission. Even if he hadn’t, the soldier is far more valuable. He can do the job of fifty, a hundred men like him; his friend Pierce has told him that more than once.   
  
Walker must be angry that the soldier doesn’t answer, because his hand is suddenly tight around the soldier’s bruised neck, and he pushes, throwing the soldier down hard onto the floor on his back. The glow from the ceiling fluorescents at this angle is as bright as a surgical lighthead, and the soldier closes his eyes instinctually. The first kick comes at the soldier’s jaw: pain spikes through the nerves of his face as the boot impacts, the coppery taste of new blood mixing with the bitter residue of the last man’s semen on his tongue.   
  
He clenches his teeth; this is still okay, this isn’t—  
  
The second kick: the man’s foot has shifted, and this blow lands on the soldier’s ribs. His eyes snap open.  
  
_“Hey,”_  a voice says, loud, and all the men above the soldier jolt to attention like they are in basic training, although the soldier doesn’t remember whether he has ever been in basic training.   
  
It doesn’t matter; Rumlow is there, has already placed himself between the soldier and Walker.   
  
The soldier is still catching his breath, but he hears a little exhale coming from his own mouth that sounds a lot like a laugh.  
  
“What part of  _nothing below the neck_  do you dumb fucks not understand?” Rumlow says. “I need to draw you a little diagram, huh? Color it in with red crayon?”  
  
Walker’s face is red, and he jabs his finger angrily down at where the soldier is lying, like a child complaining to its mother. “He was  _rude_. He didn’t answer a simple—”   
  
Rumlow shoves at him with a hand in the middle of his chest, forcing him to take a step back; the other man is larger than Rumlow, and this fact, as well as the easy way Rumlow succeeds in moving him, clearly makes Walker even angrier. He has not done up his pants, and his genitals are still visible, still wet. His face is even redder than them.  
  
Seeing this, the soldier doesn’t smile, exactly, but he lets his face relax a little so that he could smile if he allowed himself. He rolls himself onto his side, and spits the blood that had collected in his mouth onto the floor.  
  
Above him, Rumlow says: “You want someone to comfort you about being shitty at your job, they got hotlines for that. You’re suspended from the team. We can handle people that can’t control themselves, but not if they can’t shoot worth shit either.”  
  
Walker goes redder, and opens his mouth. It seems like he is aiming for outright insubordination, maybe even an attempt at violence. But then he stops, because the soldier has gotten to his feet and is standing behind Rumlow.   
  
The man stares at him over Rumlow’s shoulder like he is looking at a monster rising from the ocean. He takes a deep breath, and his throat moves. He is still red, but he says nothing and does nothing. He is a coward.   
  
The soldier actually does smile now. He can’t help it.  
  
“That’s enough,” Rumlow says to the other men. He doesn’t raise his voice, and doesn’t need to. “Head back upstairs. Everyone. Party’s over. Go jerk off at home.”  
  
There is groaning, and complaining, and a few more words spoken between Rumlow and his men. The soldier doesn’t really listen because none of it makes a difference; Rumlow’s decision is final and they are leaving.   
  
The others leave, boots squeaking on the shiny floor: Walker angrily pushes a piece of covered equipment out of his way as he goes, but it doesn’t fall. The door closes behind them with a thud, and only Rumlow and Rumlow’s larger companion are still in the room with the soldier.  
  
“Look at me,” Rumlow says, and the soldier does. Rumlow reaches out to him: he is rearranging his hair, pushing it out of his face. His hands are warm. He doesn’t seem disgusted by how dirty the soldier’s hair is after everything he has done today, or by the blood and drool still smeared on his face; he wipes at this mess on his skin with the heel of his palm, dries his own hand off in turn on the side of the soldier’s black pants. “Not too bad now,” he says, and then smiles.   
  
Something like a shiver goes through the soldier’s body, his nerves lighting up like they had when the other man had pressed down on his eyes, but this is different; this is almost entirely good. There is an edge to it that  _isn’t_  good, an edge that he can’t place right now, but that is far away and unimportant.   
  
Still, the reaction embarrasses him: here in this room full of things belonging to HYDRA, with the other man watching them, it seems wrong, unprofessional.   
  
But Rumlow doesn’t seem to mind. He keeps smiling, and touches the side of the soldier’s head, and says: “We’ll get you cleaned up better at home.”   
  
The soldier hears these words, and nods, and he doesn’t know when he has felt this good before.


	3. Chapter 3

He knows the route to Rumlow’s house well, even though it’s dark and he can’t remember when he has traveled here in a car before. The soldier could get to the house on his own, if he needed to. It wouldn’t be hard to steal a vehicle.   
  
The larger man, Rumlow’s friend—he remembers his name, vaguely, but it’s after the mission so it’s not important—rides in the back seat with the soldier while Rumlow is driving. The soldier knows Rumlow often likes having this man around, although he can’t remember why. They had not interacted much on this mission, and the soldier can’t remember the man being particularly nice to him, or particularly cruel. For most of the ride he expects that the man will say something to him, and that maybe it will trigger a more definite negative or positive feeling, but instead the man spends the entire drive playing a game on his phone.   
  
The soldier watches him for a while, frowning, then looks back out the window. The car has stopped on one of the dark streets, waiting for a light to change color up ahead. His head hurts. Something has been building up slowly, like a weight in his stomach, since the two of them took him out of the building through the largely unused exit people always use when the soldier is with them. It’s not—it’s not anger, not now. But it’s  _something_ , something that makes his whole body feel tense, like he is still in the cold room with the technicians instead of sitting on a soft leather seat inside a car. A very long time ago, back when the scientists had all spoken Russian, they had sometimes tested substances on small animals before they tried them out on the soldier. They wanted to see if the soldier would survive, and he always did. The animals had been closed off behind glass so that the gases and liquids they used on them would not hurt the scientists. The animals had died, and some of them had scratched at the glass first. Now he is with his friend and he should feel safe, but the soldier keeps remembering the animals. It’s like there is an animal like that inside his head, scratching at something in there, painful.   
  
It doesn’t make sense. There is no immanent danger. He is not badly injured. He is not around the others anymore. He should feel safe. So why does his head keep getting worse?   
  
Across from him, the larger man’s phone game dings loudly, and he makes a satisfied snorting noise. The phone's screen is glowing bright in the dark interior of the car, lighting up the man’s face from underneath. The soldier looks away from that, back out the window, and soon the light changes color and the car speeds up again. The something-like-scratching in the soldier’s head doesn’t go away.   
  
Rumlow waits until the automatic garage door has closed itself behind them before he turns off the engine, and then he looks up at the soldier in the rearview mirror and smiles before opening his door. The soldier doesn’t move: he knows, somehow, that right now he is expected to wait here instead of getting out of the vehicle by himself. Sure enough, Rumlow opens the soldier’s door and grabs him by the human arm, his hand clutching him just above the elbow. Rumlow says something across the soldier to his friend, who holds up a finger to indicate that he’s still busy with his phone. Rumlow shrugs, and pulls on the soldier’s arm. The soldier stands, Rumlow's hand gripping tight through his clothing as if the soldier is so hurt that he can’t walk, even though he isn’t.   
  
The door out of the garage leads, oddly, into something like a small laundry room, with tiles on the floor, and a bright overhead light that Rumlow turns on—the soldier remembers this room, but he still can’t help but be surprised: why do people have houses now that lead straight into laundry rooms? It seems strange, even though he can’t specifically remember a time when people didn’t have them. He doesn’t ask about it, of course, just waits silently near the small set of shelves next to the washing machine as Rumlow puts down his keys, as he undoes his boots and kicks them off. Then Rumlow is in front of him again, tilting the soldier’s head down slightly to get a better look under the light.  
  
“Christ,” he says, and he whistles softly. “They really did a number on you.”  
  
The soldier doesn’t react. His injuries do not seem worse than usual. There’s a tight soreness over his right cheekbone that feels like a still-healing cut, and his throat still hurts when he swallows, and he aches down his left leg from an awkward fall during the mission, but mostly he is already repaired. The only thing that's bothering him is the odd pain in his head, which seems to have already gotten worse since they entered the house.   
  
Something about it must show on his face, as well, because now Rumlow frowns at him. He leans a little closer, like he is about to say something, but then there’s the sound of someone loudly clearing his throat from the doorway.   
  
Rumlow’s friend must have finished with whatever he’d been doing with his phone. He steps into the small room and shoves the door closed behind him with a loud thud, like he’s deliberately trying to make a lot of noise. “Hi,” he says. “ _So_  sorry I interrupted.”  
  
“You’re free to leave,” Rumlow says to him over the soldier’s shoulder, but his voice is light. “I’ll call you a ride, even.”  
  
“You know I can’t,” the man says. The room is narrow and he is big, but still, when he hits Rumlow’s shoulder with his own on his way past them, it seems deliberate. “Pierce says you’re not allowed to keep him overnight without supervision anymore,” he goes on. “He’s worried about you getting carried away again.”  
  
Rumlow has to turn away from the soldier to look at the man now, and the soldier can’t see his expression. “Whatever,” he says. “But watch your boots. You tracked blood all over the carpet last time you were here.”  
  
“It’s dried already,” the man says and shrugs, and Rumlow turns back to the soldier. He is smiling.  
  
The soldier’s head is really hurting. The tone of the conversation had been wrong—it was as if everything they said was part of some joke between them, but if Pierce had really told the man that, why were they both treating it like it wasn’t serious? People were supposed to do what Pierce said. If the man  _had_  been joking about Pierce, why is he really sticking around? And—  
  
Rumlow’s hand is on his human arm again, tight. “Come on,” he’s saying to him, and the soldier follows him out of the strange entranceway with the laundry machines, out through a living room and down a hallway. Rumlow doesn’t seem worried about him tracking blood, even though there is quite a large amount on him from the mission. They go into a bedroom, and the soldier’s head feels even worse, but they don’t stay: Rumlow pushes open another door and pulls him by his arm into a bathroom, flicking on the lights on the way.   
  
The soldier looks around. The room is bright white and small: a sink and toilet along one wall, and beyond that a shower with a glass door. The soldier had been at another house recently where the bathroom had been much bigger, although he doesn’t remember whose house it was.   
  
Standing behind him slightly in the doorway, Rumlow reaches over and flicks another switch by the door: the lights had already been on, but now the room gets even brighter. The soldier allows his eyes to dart upwards to look at the four glowing glass circles set in the white ceiling, arranged between the normal lights.   
  
Rumlow smiles when the soldier looks back at him. “It’s a heater, see? Makes it nice and warm in here.”  
  
The soldier nods, the movement stiff. His whole body aches and feels light, like whatever has been going wrong in his head is spreading out all the way through him. Rumlow leads him forward two steps so the soldier is in front of the sink, and lets go of his arm, moves away to turn on the shower. Then he is back in front of him, close enough for the soldier to smell cigarettes on his clothing, and the smoke and blood and sweat from the mission.   
  
“Let’s get this gear off,” he says over the new noise of the water hitting the tiles.   
  
The soldier lets him, standing with the edge of the sink at his back. Rumlow begins with his boots, kneeling down on the clean tiled floor and helping the soldier step out of them, then stands up to start on his vest. The soldier isn’t injured, and he could do all of this himself, but—many people take his clothes off and put them on. It is okay. The air is cold on his skin where the clothing has been removed. Rumlow is very near, and the sink is close up against his back. Rumlow reaches for the fastenings on the soldier’s pants and he—   
  
“Hey,” Rumlow snaps and the soldier flinches. “Hold still. It’s me.”  
  
The soldier had shrunk back, just a little, without meaning to, and he can’t miss the flicker of raw annoyance on the other man’s face.  
  
_I’m sorry,_  he wants to say, but it won’t come out. He takes in a breath, and moves his hands to grip down on the lip of the sink behind him: this way he can brace himself against shifting backward. The surface is smooth and cool under the fingertips of his right hand; his left hand can feel the hardness if not the temperature. It is okay.  
  
He is being childish. He has been acting stupidly since they came here, since he got in Rumlow's car. He knows where he is, he remembers this place, he is safe; he is being  _stupid_. It is okay. Everything is okay.   
  
The soldier breathes in again, steady now, and he doesn’t move at all when Rumlow starts again on his pants.  
  
_“There_  you go,” Rumlow says, pushing the fabric down over the soldier’s thighs. The air is still not quite warm enough even with those heaters on, even with the steam from the shower slowly filling the room. “Lucky I make the others keep your gear on,” he says, and he is pulling down the soldier’s underwear as well, sliding it down over his hips. “Above the neck only with everyone else, isn’t that right?”  
  
“Yes, sir.” He is trying to steady his breath, which for some reason has escaped him again.   
  
Rumlow leads him to step out of the last of his clothing, straightens himself up in front of the soldier's naked body. “Not like it used to be, huh?” he says.   
  
The soldier doesn’t answer. With his own boots off now, the difference in height between them has decreased, and Rumlow’s smile is very close. Steam is everywhere now, lit up in the glare from the lights overhead, but there’s not enough steam in the room to make it this hard to breathe. He doesn’t know why he can’t breathe.  
  
“Better this way than before, yeah?” Rumlow prompts. This time the soldier makes himself nod. The noise from the shower is very loud. It is so bright in here. Everything is—his head—  
  
“Now hold still,” Rumlow says, loud, and he is still looking at the soldier but the soldier sees that now he has his hand on his own belt, undoing the buckle, and he—the soldier has to hold still. He must not seem like a threat. The person who used to be in charge of the soldier had explained this to him. The soldier is frightening, he had said. He had explained everything very carefully. The soldier’s arm is frightening. The soldier is always too angry. The soldier looks like a monster.  
  
He closes his eyes. He can still hear him undoing his clothes. It is dark. He is not here. The person who used to be in charge of the soldier is here. He is saying it now.  _They’re not scared of you after they see you cry,_  the man in charge says, and it is okay. It was harder back then before the rule about his neck, but it was good that the soldier’s team was not scared of him unnecessarily. It was part of the soldier’s work with HYDRA. The soldier had cried a lot when they were all in that house together, and it had been difficult, having them do that to him on that mission after they had all been working together for so long. But the man in charge had been right, and the others weren’t scared after that. They had made him walk the next day when he couldn’t walk. The soldier was angry, but they were not scared. It was good. It was—  
  
“Hey.  _HEY.”_  
  
The loud voice makes him snap back: it is bright everywhere—his eyes are open, the sink is behind him, and something has snapped off in his hand.   
  
He looks down, dumbly, at the metal palm of his left hand, at the chunk of white ceramic that used to be part of Rumlow's sink. He blinks.  
  
Blank with terror, he looks up again at Rumlow’s face. The nauseating fear rising in his throat recedes a little when he realizes that the man doesn’t look angry at all.   
  
Rumlow says: “Fuck,  _that’s_  never happened before,” and he sounds almost  _impressed_ , and then he laughs.   
  
The soldier stares at him. He isn’t angry?  
  
“Oh, baby,” he says, and his tone is concerned now, as if he’s comforting a small child, although he is still smiling. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” His hand is at the side of the soldier’s head, firm, cupping his skull. “It’s okay. You're okay,” His breath on the soldier’s cheek, his jaw. “You’re here with me now, yeah? I got you. Everything's fine.”   
  
_Rumlow isn’t angry_. The soldier is okay. He is here, and he is  _safe_. The knowledge is so overwhelming that it almost drowns out the shame he feels at acting so horrifically. He had started thinking about other things, about people that weren’t his friends—the fact that he had done such a thing inside Rumlow’s house is already unforgivable, and then he had lost focus, dangerously, had damaged his  _property_ —  
  
—but somehow he has forgiven him, and it’s like everything inside the soldier is lighting up again and glowing.  

Rumlow pulls him closer, hand tangled in the soldier’s filthy hair as he makes shushing noises next to his ear, and the soldier even dares to lean forward a little, letting the broken piece of sink drop out of his hand to hit the floor with a clunk. He wants—maybe his friend will keep touching him, keep petting his head like that. Rumlow doesn’t, but he does take the soldier’s human arm again and lead him toward the shower, which is even  _better_.

Rumlow had gotten his own clothes off at some point—the soldier doesn’t remember when—so he is able to get right into the shower with him, positioning the soldier under the flow of water from the silver showerhead. The space is tiny once the clear glass door closes behind them, and the water on his back and neck is so hot it hurts, but it’s so nice that he doesn’t even try to shrink away from it.

His friend is so close to him, smiling, and his teeth are very white and his fingers are pressed strong against the back of the soldier’s head, and this is too nice. Nothing this nice should exist. He didn’t know anything like this  _could_  exist, not for someone like him. He is trembling, the hot water against his back cutting into him like it will overload his nerves. He feels like he will melt into a puddle. 

“There,” Rumlow says. “Don’t you feel better now?”

He nods. He is safe now, so he lets his eyes close. The heat and the warm air are taking up so much of his head that he doesn’t even remember why he hadn't felt better before this. He doesn’t want to remember. There is only the two of them and this tiny warm space. 

Rumlow is still looking at him when he opens his eyes again. He pats the side of the soldier's head, then gives a strange little smile, his eyes distant.  _“Every time,”_  he murmurs, quietly, like he's talking to himself. 

The soldier doesn’t know what he means, but it doesn’t really matter, because now his friend is touching him, hands on his wet skin. One hand cupping the soldier's chin while the other runs over a bruise on his thigh, strokes up over his hip. He even leans in and  _kisses_  the soldier on his left shoulder, on the worst part of it, brushes his lips along his scars there next to where the water is hitting them. The soldier does not know the look on his own face when Rumlow does that, but whatever is there must make his friend happy, because when he pulls back to look at him he’s grinning even more. His face is wet now: the soldier watches through the steam as little droplets of it run down his jaw.

He keeps touching him, and for a while the soldier lets himself drift again. Rumlow has a washcloth, covered with that liquid soap people use now, and he starts washing the last of the blood and muck off the soldier’s face, his neck, running the washcloth down and over the rest of his body, and it’s so nice he wants to cry. The cold that’s always  _there_ , always down to his bones no matter how long he has been out of cryo, has receded to a faint background numbness. When Rumlow reaches past him and shuts off the water, he can’t help the little hiss that comes out of his mouth at the sudden lack of warmth. 

Luckily, his friend ignores it. He steps out of the shower and then hands the soldier a towel, allows him to dry himself down and to wrap the towel around himself, and then they’re back out in the cooler air of the bedroom. Rumlow puts on some more of his own clothes in there, and then leads the soldier back out down the hallway, this time with an arm around his shoulder. His fingertips where they touch the scars on the soldier's shoulder are rough, and colder now than the hot skin there.

The leading him doesn’t seem so strange now. Rumlow doesn’t believe that the soldier is hurt—he is just helping him. The soldier doesn’t know what he’d been so upset about before. His friend is extremely nice to him.

The other man is still there, sitting on one of the high stools that are set behind the very clean countertop in the kitchen. There’s an open bottle of brownish alcohol in front of him, and a mostly empty glass. He looks up, glances between them, and then rolls his eyes. 

“Shut the fuck up,” Rumlow says, even though the other man hadn’t said anything. 

The man takes a gulp from his glass and raises his eyebrows. “Got your usual plans, then?”

“None of your fucking business,” Rumlow says. He reaches across the shiny countertop to grab the bottle.

“I’m in your fucking house, it’s my business.”

Rumlow doesn’t answer. He holds up the bottle and looks at the soldier, who nods, and Rumlow gets two more glasses from one of the cupboards.

The drink has no effect on him, of course, but the taste is familiar in a way he doesn’t understand, a way that’s completely unconnected to any memories—it feels like the kind of thing he would drink if he had not killed anybody, although of course the men here with him are also drinking it, and they have killed people. The surface of the glass is cold against his human fingers, but the drink feels warm going down his throat, in his belly. He swallows all of it, and his friend pours him another. The other man reaches over to grab the bottle back, refills his own glass again. 

“Hey,” Rumlow says. “That shit’s expensive.”

“Then why the fuck are you wasting it on him? ‘Sides, it’s my fucking compensation for tonight.” The man’s voice is a little louder than it should be. Despite his size, despite the fact that they could not have spent that long in the shower away from him, he seems to be slightly drunk already. 

Rumlow doesn’t answer him. He takes the bottle back and pours the soldier a third drink.

The other man looks up at the soldier then, eyes running over him, staying for a long moment on his metal arm. The soldier doesn’t flinch, and the man puts his glass down. He pauses a second, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and burping softly. Then he looks back at Rumlow. “It’s fucking sick, man, what you make him do.”

The soldier feels his hand grip down on his own glass. He is not sure why. But he is feeling better now, at least, and the glass doesn’t break. Nothing breaks.

Next to him, Rumlow smiles, even though the other man is not smiling, and doesn’t seem to be joking at all. “I’m not gonna  _make him_  do anything,” he says.

The other man looks at him, then looks at the soldier, and then reaches for the bottle again.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Next to him, close to the doorway to the bedroom, the other two men are arguing: they’ve been arguing for a while now, and the soldier lets the words flow past him.

He doesn’t remember this bedroom so much, not anything from before tonight, anyway. Theres’s a bed with a dark bedspread, a nightstand next to it with a lamp and a single drawer. A chest of drawers, the door to the bathroom, a window with curtains over it. The window would be close to the ground outside, and there probably aren’t even bars over it to slow him down if he had to get out, but he is safe here now and there is no reason for him to try that, no reason for him to even think about it.

“It’s just as weird if you’re looming over us,” Rumlow is saying to the larger man. “Besides, he freaks out when he’s lying flat on his back. Especially if there's bright lights on him. The Soviets used to do surgery on him without—”

“I don’t need to know that shit, Jesus _Christ_.” The other man is speaking very loudly.

The soldier tunes out the words again, looks back at the bed. Water from his still-wet hair is dripping onto his bare shoulder. He doesn’t have his clothes, and they’d taken all his weapons from him right after the mission, but weapons were never necessary for him to—

—but he has no reason to try to get out of this room. He is safe.

He focuses on the dark bedspread: the room is bright enough for him to see even from half a room away that the fabric actually has tiny paler lines on it. He doesn't remember those, either.

Rumlow says something else, and the other man says: “Okay. Fucking _whatever_. I’ll do it. But I gotta piss first.”

“You know where the bathroom is down the ha—”

But the man is already heading into the other bathroom, the one connected to the bedroom. Rumlow does not seem angry about this, though. He looks back at the soldier, face open and happy and relaxed. The soldier is still warm from the shower, so it’s fine when Rumlow takes the damp towel from the soldier’s waist and hangs it up on a hook on the back of the bedroom door. He gives the soldier a look for a moment after that, and says: “You still doing good?”

The soldier nods, and Rumlow seems satisfied, even though it hadn't been true, even though the soldier is now unable to keep his eyes from straying toward the bathroom door. The man had gone in there. He will see the sink, and he will realize what the soldier had done. The man is _already_ angry, and now he might be very angry at the soldier for it.

Behind him, Rumlow switches off the bedroom's overhead light. The soldier forces his gaze away from the door: he watches instead, in the light still spilling in from the hallway, as Rumlow turns on the small lamp on the nightstand beside the bed. Rumlow had forgiven the soldier for losing focus and breaking the sink, and so he will probably not let the other man hurt the soldier too much if the man is angry about it. But Rumlow also obviously trusts this man—he has clearly let him into his house multiple times—so maybe it wouldn’t be hard for the man to trick Rumlow into leaving him and the soldier alone together. The soldier knows that he ends up alone together like that with people who aren’t Rumlow quite a lot, even if he can’t remember it happening with this particular man.

The soldier feels his fists clench at his sides. If that happens, the soldier will have to let the man punish him. The other man works for HYDRA too, after all, and the soldier _had_ behaved terribly. The soldier will be angry, but he will have to take it. Still, Rumlow had said it was okay; it wouldn’t be _fair—_

The door opens again. The man looks angry, but the soldier can’t tell if he looks angrier than before. The man sighs, looks over at the bed and then back at the soldier, and opens his mouth like he’s going to speak.

“I broke the sink,” the soldier cuts him off.

“Huh?”

“In the bathroom. I broke it with my hand. The commander said it was okay.”

He waits. If the man is going to get angry at the soldier, he might as well do it now, and not after he has gotten them alone.

The man doesn’t get angry. He doesn't say anything at all for a few seconds, just looking between him and Rumlow, who's still standing near the nightstand, and then he lifts his hands palms outward in front of him, the way people often do when they are trying to calm down the soldier before the soldier kills them. “ _Okay then_ , soldier,” he says. “Whatever you say. It’s good.”

The soldier scowls at him. The light is worse in here now and he can’t read the man’s expression. Is the man saying he doesn’t believe him? He had said _it's good_ , but his tone was so exaggerated he probably didn't actually mean it. A lot of the people in HYDRA who are not the soldier's friends like to talk to him like that, saying good things about the soldier that they don't mean and then laughing a lot. He doesn't like those people. He—he doesn’t like this man. He might be close to Rumlow, and work for HYDRA, but he has been nothing but rude since they got to this house.

What he does next doesn’t help, either.

The man turns to Rumlow again, and gives him a weird look. He sighs, and then he's climbing onto the bed, turning and moving himself up so his back is against the headboard. He accidentally shoves aside one of the pillows as he's getting there, and he pushes it away, then kicks it onto the floor like he’s annoyed. He settles himself in like that, knees up, soles of his boots flat against the bedspread.

The soldier frowns even more, and clenches his fists tighter. This man had not touched him earlier in the evening, has in fact never touched him before, the soldier is sure of that now, but clearly he intends to now, and maybe that is why he had been making fun of him. Rumlow is here, but an angry man of that size can do a lot of damage even while abiding by Rumlow’s rules.

The soldier glances at Rumlow, who doesn’t smile, just tilts his head in a _come here_ gesture.

The soldier goes. 

He stops at the side of the bed next to Rumlow, not knowing what to do next. The other men are both clothed, and he—

—he is safe. He is safe.

The large man gives another loud sigh, and leans forward from where he’s sitting and takes the soldier’s human arm. He makes no pretense at gentle guiding like Rumlow does, just yanks the soldier up and towards him. Rumlow is right there, and it’s safe, so the soldier allows himself to be manhandled onto the bed, pulled so he is sitting between the other man’s legs with his back against the man’s chest and the man’s knees on either side of him, cutting him off on three sides.

He exhales. The man is warm through his clothing where it touches the soldier’s bare skin. The soldier smells smoke and blood and sweat on the man's clothing, his skin. The buckle of his belt digs sharp into the skin of the soldier's lower back.

But it is okay. He is safe. The soldier exhales again, forces his way through another breath, and does not look at the window or the door. He looks ahead, and then there's new movement next to the bed out of the corner of his eye: Rumlow is retrieving an object from the drawer in the nightstand. He turns to look.

It’s a knife, about seven inches long including its handle, its blade still hidden inside a leather sheath. Rumlow looks down at it, smiling a little, like he’s found something that belongs to an old friend. He rests it against both his hands, like he is weighing it, and then draws the blade out of the sheath.

The soldier follows the motion of the blade with his eyes. It’s a dagger, he can see now; black titanium nitride coating on its blade, the type of smaller backup knife he might keep strapped to the inside of his leg on a mission. The soldier has never been issued this particular model of knife by HYDRA, and he does not know its strengths and advantages, but his friend looks down at it very fondly now. He sets down the empty sheath on the nightstand. Then he looks up at the soldier.

The soldier is okay. He breathes in and out again, and a bit more water drips off his hair. The man sitting behind him shifts, clothing catching on the soldier’s skin as he moves, and then his hands are closing around both of the soldier’s wrists.

The mattress dips as Rumlow climbs onto the bed as well.

He sits near the soldier’s feet, and then moves the soldier’s legs so he can sit between them and get closer. The black coating on the blade means the metal doesn’t catch the light as he moves, but it is still very visible even in the softer glow from the lamp. The soldier keeps his eyes on it, but for a moment after that Rumlow doesn't move, just looks at him. He is smiling.

The soldier breathes. The skin of the other man’s palm feels rough where it grips the soldier's human wrist, and two of the fingers of the man's other hand are tracing now along the wrist of the soldier's metal arm, seemingly unconsciously, as if the man is curious about what it feels like. It is quiet in the room. The soldier can feel the man behind him breathing, in and out.

Then the man's fingers stop moving, and he speaks. “I’m going to die right here,” he says. The soldier can feel the vibrations in his chest, the breath against his neck and the back of his ear. “He’s going to snap a chunk of my arm off like that fucking sink, all so that you can—”

“He won’t,” Rumlow says, taking his eyes off the soldier. “He’ll be fine. He's always good.” He looks back at the soldier. “Soldier, you’re going to stay here with me, yeah? You’re going to be good.”

The soldier is almost grateful to be spoken to so directly, because it allows him to focus properly again on the man in front of him. And—he is. He is going to be good. He has not been concentrating well at all since the end of his mission—he’d assumed he hadn’t needed to, since the mission was over, and since his friend was around. But then he’d slipped, back there in the bathroom: he had gotten angry, had acted stupidly and dangerously. He has kept on slipping, even up until now.

He swallows. He needs to do better now and concentrate again, needs to _stay with him_ , and he is _good_ at doing that. His friend Pierce has praised him for this before, for how well the soldier can concentrate for a long time while he is hunting someone. He has told the soldier that the Russian scientists made him very very good at that. Pierce is not always happy with the Russians about everything, but he is always happy about that.

The soldier can make up for before. He can concentrate and be good.

Even so, it takes him a moment to move. He nods at Rumlow, and Rumlow smiles even more, showing teeth. Then he looks down.

The soldier is naked, and for the first time now he  _feels_ naked, his skin bare and pale against the dark bedspread underneath, bracketed by the man’s legs clothed in black fabric. He is safe, he will stay here, and Rumlow has already been so nice to him, but he feels—

Rumlow touches him, with the hand that isn't holding the knife, gripping one side of the soldier’s hip, thumb moving across the crest of his hipbone. The soldier’s skin is still faintly pinker than usual from the shower, and even in this light he can see the little paler spots Rumlow’s thumb leaves behind after he’s pressed it into the skin, after his hand shifts and moves over the soldier's bare abdomen, down his other hip.

The other man’s heartbeat is strong against his naked back. He must have turned his head, because his breath is on the soldier's cheek now. It smells sharp, like the alcohol they’d been drinking.

Rumlow lets go of his hip, looks up at him again. Then he leans closer and brings his other hand up, the hand with the knife, and lays the hand against the side of the soldier's face, the heel of his palm pressing into his cheek, the flat of the blade brushing against the soldier's hair. Rumlow's hand is rough and warm and the blade is cool where it touches his ear. Despite his breathing getting more difficult again, despite all the noise his own heart is making, the soldier can’t help but tilt his head toward his friend's hand.

He is safe.

“You can make all the noise you want,” Rumlow says to him, and he is looking into the soldier's eyes. His eyes look very dark, as dark as the surface of the knife so close to his face. “I won’t punish you for screaming. But you gotta hold still. You gonna do that for me?”

The soldier breathes. He gives a tiny nod.

Rumlow smiles. He looks _proud,_ and something inside of the soldier glows warm, as warm as he had been in the shower. The soldier does something daring, something that he doesn't think he's done before, something that HYDRA has never required him to do, something that he does because he wants to: he lifts his head up a little from the other man's chest, and kisses the delicate skin on the inside of Rumlow's wrist.

Rumlow closes his eyes for a second, but not in anger. His face is flushed, and when he opens his eyes he smiles, shows his teeth again. Then he takes his hand away, moves it down, and re-angles the knife. 

When the metal first pricks the skin of at the bottom of the soldier's chest, it’s so quick and sharp it barely even hurts.

The soldier looks down, watching himself as the long red thread appears along his abdomen. It isn’t so bad. It stings, feels exposed and wrong when the blood wells out and hits the air, but it’s not bad. He has had worse—even some of the things the others had done to him earlier had hurt worse. It's an odd thing to do, as well, but he is certain that many others have done odd things when they are using him, even if the soldier doesn’t remember exactly what the things were.

He bites his lip, breathing steady, and just watches as the knife detaches, as Rumlow's hand moves up. Another long, slow downward stroke, and the soldier holds still. The other man’s hands are still on his wrists, tight, and the soldier feels sweat against the skin on his human wrist. The soldier could pull away, but he doesn’t. He could go away in his head already, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t _need_ to. It’s not that bad. There’s quite a lot of blood on his abdomen already, and the soldier has always hated the way blood feels on him and he hates it _now_ , warm and slimy and the smell strong in the air. But it is okay.

Rumlow moves the knife again, and the man behind him makes a disapproving noise.

“Just a little more,” Rumlow says in front of them, and he's looking down but the soldier can see that half of his mouth is still turned upwards in a smile. He moves his free hand down over the soldier’s abdomen, scoops up some of the blood where it has started to pool in the hollow at the top of the soldier's thigh. His hand shifts, his thumb running briefly over the soldier's cock, which is lying limp and completely uninterested, but Rumlow doesn't seem to mind that. His thumb leaves behind a little smear of wet red. The soldier watches.

Rumlow sets the knife down carefully close to where the other man's booted foot is still resting on the bedspread, and then undoes his own pants, pulling himself out. He is already hard, and out of habit the soldier moves his eyes away, over to a blank patch of bedspread. In the corner of his vision, Rumlow picks up the knife again, and then he uses his other hand, the hand still full of the soldier's blood, to—

Blood is not a good way to get your dick slicked up, the soldier knows this from experience. It will dry too quickly, and the friction will hurt both of them, especially since his friend is quite big. But Rumlow shows no immediate signs of wanting to penetrate him: he just runs his hand over himself until his dick is fully coated in shiny red, and then begins to stroke himself. The wet sound of his palm moving reminds the soldier of the sound in his dreams when he stabs someone, although maybe his brain is just reminded of that because of the smell of blood.

“That’s just sick, man,” the man behind the soldier says. "Seriously, Brock, why don't you just fuck him like a normal person?”

Rumlow grins at the other man. He does not seem ashamed to be touching himself like this in front of his friend. He doesn't seem to even care that his friend is speaking to him like this. “Because sometimes it's good to branch out."

“If you have a fuckin' death wish."

“I told you," he says, already sounding a bit breathless. “He's _always_ good."

The man makes an unimpressed noise. “When I got blood all over your carpet, did you jerk off to that too?"

He just laughs, and looks back down at the soldier. His hand is still moving fast on himself. His grip is making the muscles in his forearm stand out. “Don’t listen to him, baby, you’re doing so good.”

The soldier _is_ doing good. Rumlow is working himself like some of the others had done earlier when they were preparing to use his mouth, but he still doesn’t move toward the soldier like that, or try to reposition him. Instead, he lifts the blade in his other hand again and—

This one is deeper, going through the full thickness of the soldier's skin, but it’s still okay. He is still able to stay here. Concentrating despite pain isn’t as easy as it is on a mission, where the soldier always has something else concrete to focus on no matter how much he is hurt, where he always has that wonderful clarity of purpose that his friend Pierce has often praised. But it’s still okay, and the soldier does very well until Rumlow, his other hand still moving on himself, rests the hand gripping the knife close to one of the lines of deep blood on the soldier's stomach, and pushes the tip of his thumb into the wound.

The soldier jerks back in surprise, his back slamming against the man behind him, and the man's hands clamp down on the soldier's wrists and a second later there’s a wet snapping sound as a blow lands across his face.

He had seen the blow coming, of course, and had let it happen, but it still takes a moment for it to sink in what really _has_ happened, even with the new heat and wetness blooming on the soldier's face: Rumlow had hit him with the knife still in his hand, opening a deep slice in his cheek.

The pain is deep, sharper and hotter than any of the other times his friend has hit him. He blinks, gasping, and then Rumlow has the soldier's hair wrapped around the fist of his other hand, wrenching his head to one side. The knife is close to his face again.

“This could be _so much worse_ ,” Rumlow says, and his voice is the way it always is when he’s angry: loud but very calm, like he could be smiling but isn't. Something is very alive in those dark eyes, glinting like blood. The soldier feels cold. “Do you understand?”

“I’m sorry,” the soldier says. Blood is dripping into his mouth; the angle Rumlow's holding his face at is causing the liquid to flow down his face, across his nose and his other cheek. It gets onto his lips and his tongue as he speaks. “I’m sorry I moved, sir, I’m sorry—”

“Shut up,” Rumlow snaps, and the soldier feels like he will vomit. The blood is dripping off his chin, now; his nose is full of the sharp violent smell of it. He will be still, he will hold still, but what if he has already—he has been bad, and maybe Rumlow won’t even punish him, maybe he will just go _away_ —

Rumlow lets go of his hair. He smiles again, just a little, but it's enough to make the soldier want to cry with relief. He pats the soldier's cheek, smearing more blood. "No harm done, yeah?"

The soldier doesn't answer, although it takes all of his effort not to start babbling with gratitude. Rumlow doesn't want to hear his excuses; he wants him to focus. He sniffs, bites his lip to keep quiet.

The man behind him makes another complaining sound, shifting against the soldier's back. “Your girlfriend almost crushed my balls just now.”

“Not getting much use anyway, are they,” Rumlow says, but then he takes the soldier by either side of his hips and pulls him forward, managing to hold the blade in a way that he avoids cutting him when he does it. The soldier allows himself to be moved: once he is repositioned, he's only half sitting up against the man behind him, his upper back pressed lower now against the man’s broad chest. The other man, catching on to the new position, switches his grip so he has his arms hooked under the soldier’s armpits.

“Better?” Rumlow asks.

“Not really," the man says, but Rumlow doesn’t seem angry. He’s still between the soldier’s legs, but the soldier is closer to lying down now, spread out exposed in front of him like a canvas. 

Rumlow flicks the knife over in his hand, and raises it slightly, and then drags it down the soldier’s front like he’s slicing open the side of a tent.

The soldier makes a loud noise through his teeth. He can’t move. He needs to be still: he has already messed up and made Rumlow mad; but it's _so hard_ when there is nothing else to focus on. He can't help but draw back just slightly, hips pressing down into the mattress and shoulders pushing back against the man behind him, and he wants to shake with terror that Rumlow will notice that he moved and punish him again or just—

He doesn’t. 

Rumlow's free hand has gone back to his own dick, and the fast slick noises that the movements makes against his skin are at least proof that he is still enjoying this, but it’s no help, the soldier is hot and wet and stinking of metal and then Rumlow drives the knife down in a line right next to the one he had just made, and the soldier won’t move, he _won’t move_ , even when Rumlow sets the knife down again on the bed and now the soldier knows exactly what's coming, his body remembers...

Two fingers, slipping on wet skin and digging in under the lip of the newest wound down to the second knuckle, probing and then _twisting_ , and the back of the soldier’s head is banging against the other man’s collarbone, again and again.

Rumlow takes his fingers out slowly, sucks blood off them. He looks up at the soldier, and the air between them seems to blur, the room greying out. There’s a high, weak sound coming from somewhere, like someone crying, like another sound from one of the soldier's nightmares. 

Rumlow is still looking at him, face only half-visible through the blur in the room, and now he pushes those two fingers halfway back in. The nightmare sound gets louder.

“The noises you make,” Rumlow says, sometime after that, when there is a moment of quiet, when the soldier is trying to suck in a breath through air that seems too thick. The soldier can see him better for now; there's blood on his teeth. “And that _mouth_ ," he says. " _Fuck_.”

The soldier tries to answer. He is still here. He hasn't gone away. But he can't form words, as if the blood has made his mouth and tongue too slippery. He tries, and then the other man is saying something behind him. Perhaps this isn't the first thing he has said.

“Nah," Rumlow says in response. "It's not too much for you. Is it, baby?”

It is too much. 

The soldier is too hot; his skin is wet even in the places he's not covered in red, sweat covering all the parts of him that are not made of metal. His insides cramp with the heat. His chest is moving too fast under where the other man has slung a forearm across it to keep him steady. His face is dripping, his eyes and nose and mouth leaking fluid just like his gouged-open cheek as the breath slides fast in and out of his lungs. The man's grip on his chest is not tight, but it feels like a vise. He won’t move, and he can’t speak.

Rumlow's eyes move to the man behind him, then back to the soldier. “You gonna keep being good for me?” he prompts.

The soldier will do anything for him. He cannot even begin to make up for all the good things his friend has done for him, all that he has done just _tonight_ , has no other way to express everything the soldier feels for him. The soldier will let him stick anything in there, into the openings he's made on him. The soldier knows, suddenly, very certainly, that Rumlow has stuck other things into him like this before, things that have hurt the soldier even worse. He knows that this is why the other man is here on the bed with them tonight. He doesn't care.

He peels his head up from the man's wet shirt behind it, jerks it forward in a weak nod. It hurts just to do that, makes nausea rise in his throat, makes his whole body want to shudder and break down from the heat and the blood, but still the soldier makes an effort to move again, shifting his heavy body very slightly in front of Rumlow, toward him, and spreading his legs wider.

Rumlow sees this, and he exhales. It's a good sound.

“ _Brave_ boy,” he says, and he leans in and kisses the soldier on the mouth. Still leaning close, he shifts his hand down, two fingertips brushing down along the soldier's slippery broken skin, stopping next to one overheated spot where the blood is welling out the most. His breath is on the soldier's face. The soldier doesn't move; the soldier is still here.

In one sharp movement, Rumlow pushes the fingers all the way in.

Things go dark, and there is a lot of noise. The soldier holds still. He holds still for a very long time, until after the nightmare sounds have finally faded away to nothing, and then somewhere the soldier feels the splash of new heat over the skin of his belly, the liquid thicker than blood.

 

* * *

  

It hadn't been a nightmare, because the blood is coming from the soldier this time instead of somebody else.

“There,” Rumlow is saying from above him somewhere. His hand is on the soldier's stomach, rubbing little circles on the opened skin. “Get it all in there.”

“That’s just fucking disgusting,” says the other man. He is still behind the soldier.

The soldier doesn’t say anything. His teeth are chattering, and if he speaks they will know. They must know anyway; his whole body is shaking as well, the movement obvious next to the steadiness of Rumlow's hands and the stillness of the man sitting behind him. The soldier tries and fails to clench his teeth hard enough to stop the chattering. At some point, Rumlow stops touching him; at some point after that, the man behind him pulls away, lays the soldier down on his back on the bed.

Alone, the soldier turns on his side and curls in on himself as much as he can, even though Rumlow had not told him that he could move. But nobody says anything, and so the soldier allows himself to move a little more, pressing his human hand against the wetness on his stomach and touching, tentatively.

Nothing is outside of him there that is not supposed to be outside of him, but there is a lot of blood.

The other two men are talking off to one side, their voices hardly penetrating over the sound of his own teeth. 

“—relax...—heal up right away—”

“—don’t give a shit. That shit was fucking nightmare fodder. There’s not enough whiskey in the world to—”

“—have already forgotten by the time we clock in on—”

The soldier keeps touching his stomach, gently, so gently, with the hand that isn't a weapon. Everything is slippery, and then there's the place closer to the hip on one side where it's so split open, the skin around it hot and inflamed-tender under his fingers. He thinks, suddenly, of other people touching his arm like that, of fingers going into him like that, of blood and bright light and fresh wounds around the metal, of—

The soldier frowns. No. He will think of something else. Rumlow had not been angry when the soldier moved just now, so the soldier probably doesn’t have to concentrate and _stay here_ anymore, either. He can go away now, he can think of—

Something. He tries to think of _something_. He thinks about when he had been warm in the shower, with Rumlow touching him so gently. Nice. So many people had been nice to the soldier. He has done bad things, he has hurt people much worse than he is hurting now. And he is still allowed to go away and think of nice things, and he can—

But the thoughts slip away out of his head, like the blood and sweat on his skin have somehow made the memories slippery as well, and instead the soldier's mind goes back to the animals from before, the animals he'd kept thinking of, the ones the Russian scientists had used. His hand tightens against his stomach, and he feels sick again, nauseous with a heavy feeling that seems to go through every part of him, his body and his brain as well. For the first time he can ever remember, he thinks:

_Those animals hadn’t done anything._

He has done terrible things, but those animals hadn't.

Everything in him goes still. It even feels like he stops shivering.

The soldier feels colder, now, colder all over, but also like he is _close_ to something. Like he is about to step out from inside an overheated stuffy room, into the cool air outside, where—

—where?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he is thinking of, what old memories he's almost touching. But he is close, his brain is so  _close_ to something. He isn’t—the soldier isn’t—those animals—HYDRA has kept him like one of those—

But the thought that will come after this is precipitous, dangerous, like a fall into a howling void.

He closes his eyes against it. He can’t finish that thought. He can't take that step outside, wherever that outside is: if he goes outside he will be _alone_ out there, and where he is now he is in awful pain, but he is not alone.

He does good work for HYDRA. They take care of him. They have given him so many things.

The soldier stays on his side, his eyes squeezed closed and his head so carefully blank, and eventually he feels a hand that brushes against his human shoulder.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” his friend's voice says, and the soldier lets himself be pushed gently back onto his back. His friend is holding what looks like a small white towel, damp with warm water, and he drags it down over the soldier's stomach. Despite the dampness, the fabric is still rough enough to pull at the broken skin painfully. But the shallower cuts there are already healing, and it's not that bad.

The soldier rests his head back on the bedspread, licks his dry lips. His teeth aren't chattering anymore, and the blood and other liquids have mostly dried on his face. He wants to say something, but when he moves his eyes to scan the rest of the room, he sees that the larger man is there again as well, standing by the doorway. He is holding the bottle they had been pouring drinks out of earlier. He isn't holding a glass now. The soldier turns his head away from him, and the man says something.

Rumlow stops what he's doing, looks up at the man. “Soldier,” he says. “Our buddy here thinks that you might've had a problem with that nice bit of fun we just had. You wanna let him know what you think?”

The soldier looks back at the man, then at Rumlow. He tries to work up some saliva in his mouth. His throat is raw, even worse than it had been earlier after the other men had used it, but he still speaks after he turns his head back to face the man.

“I liked it,” he says. His voice comes out quiet, broken, but he is sure they can both hear.

Nobody answers, and the soldier flicks his eyes back down to Rumlow. The towel in his friend's hands is almost completely red now, and he is no longer touching the soldier with it. He doesn’t look impressed at the soldier's answer, and maybe he will get mad and get up and go away again, and the stuff that was in the soldier's head will come back and—

The soldier swallows, licks his lips again, forces a louder sound out of his throat. “I liked it. I liked it.”

Finally, the man responds. “Sure you did, kid,” he says, and turns his face away, like he’s disgusted. He lifts the bottle, and takes a drink.

“See?” Rumlow says, even though the other man doesn’t even seem to be listening anymore, and then turns his attention back to the soldier, reaching down to pat his cheek. “Let me go rinse this off, and then we’ll bandage you up all nice.”

The soldier nods up at him, and Rumlow disappears into the bathroom. The soldier closes his eyes. The man hasn't moved from the doorway, but the soldier will ignore him.

“Soldier," a voice says, closer, and even if it hadn't already been obvious who the voice belonged to, he could hear the movement of the liquid in the bottle as the man moves.

The soldier opens his eyes, doesn't bother to keep the annoyance off his face.

The man steps closer to the bed again, close enough now that the soldier can see his neck move as he swallows. “I’m going to be in the living room all night, all right?" he says. "I’m gonna sleep on the couch. If anything happens, if the commander wants to go another round, or do the weirder shit he did last time, or like—even if he doesn’t, and you just wanna—” He stops to brush his hand over his mouth. “I’m right there on the couch.”

The soldier glares up at him. So he _had_ been right before. The man is looking for a chance to get them alone together. He wants to get the soldier away from Rumlow, go behind Rumlow's back, right after he'd been so rude to Rumlow for _hours_. Maybe he's not even really angry about what the soldier did to the bathroom. Maybe he's just jealous.

Whatever it is, the soldier is too tired now to get really angry, so he just narrows his eyes at the man, then looks away from him without answering.

The man sighs, obviously realizing his plan isn't going to work. There's another soft swish of liquid, and then the soldier hears his steps as he leaves the room.

But the soldier's friend is back very soon after that.

He lets himself drift again, like he had in the shower before when it had all been so nice, although this time he can feel a constant sting as his friend wipes up the rest of the blood, tapes up some of the deeper cuts. It doesn't matter. Rumlow brings the soldier water; he strokes the soldier's hair back as he drinks it. He helps him under the covers when he's done: he doesn't seem to mind that the soldier is still leaking blood, that he's going to get it everywhere and mess up the white bedsheets. He climbs in as well and pulls the bedspread over them both, and then turns off the lamp. Just before the light disappears, the soldier sees that he has laid the knife out next to the lamp on the nightstand. The blade has been cleaned, but it's not back in its sheath.

Rumlow shifts closer then, his lips moving over the closing cut on the soldier's cheek, sucking at it gently. The soldier makes a noise in his throat that makes Rumlow laugh: he is so close against him that the soldier can feel the laugh in his own chest. He shivers. But Rumlow's skin is very warm, and the bedcovers are soft around them, and Rumlow's mouth is gentle when he moves it to press against the side of the soldier's neck. 

Rumlow smells like soap, the same nice way he had smelled when they came out of the shower, and the soldier can hardly taste the blood now. He relaxes, slowly, and soon enough his breathing doesn't feel too fast anymore, and the sickness lingering in his throat fades to almost nothing. He feels good. He is okay. He is tired, and he hurts still, but his friend is here, and it is okay.

His friend reaches his hand down between their bodies, brushes the edge of one bandaged wound with the tip of his thumb. “You did good tonight,” he says, his voice low and close as his lips touch the edge of the soldier's ear. "You always do so, so good."

The soldier wonders if he has ever loved anyone so much.

 

 

 


End file.
